


To Be Courted

by MinervaDashwood



Series: Maddy Brosca [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 07:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2614088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaDashwood/pseuds/MinervaDashwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble. Maddy Brosca gets a rose</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Courted

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for implied rape, but nothing graphic. If I need to change the warnings or rating, please let me know.

Maddy’s throat fills with something she can’t name, and she’s sure she’ll choke in the next second. Unable to speak, she stares at the flower, her cheeks hot and sweat gathering on her palms.

He must want something. Behind that sincere, hopeful grin is a sinister plan that will use her, break her, or both. She should have taken Beraht’s lyrium and run far, far away.

“I picked it in Lothering,” Alistair says, arm outstretched, fingers lightly holding the thornless stem, and Maddy takes it from him, hands shaking and eyes unable to meet his gaze.

She should say something cutting now. Like how they’ll never go looking for a rosebush to supplement this one. How flowers are silly, easily spoiled, sentimental and fragile tokens.

“I wanted to do something nice for you,” he goes on, thumbs loped in his belt, fingers splayed along his hips. “You’ve experienced none of the good parts of—“

  
_Anything_ she thinks.

“—being a Warden. And yet you never complain about any of it.”

The same, unnamed force claws at her chest, makes her eyes water. What is there to complain of? Every night she goes to bed with a full belly. No one takes her upon their mattress unless she wills it, and she’s not waiting with baited breath to have a dagger shoved into her back.

“For me?” she chokes. It is barely a whisper, some slight change in the breeze. She’s can’t believe that this is anything meaningful; Alistair has gone about the camp plying them all with gentlemanly tokens. Flowers for the women, mead for the men, a bone for the dog.

“I think of you when I see it,” he shrugs.

She swallows against the monster in her throat. “You think I’m a gentle flower?” Surely this one is meant for the bard. Maybe Morrigan’s rose is riddled with thorns. Alistair’s gotten things mixed up again.

“No,” he chuckles. “I mean, I wanted you to know what a rare and precious thing you are. You’ve taken responsibility for all of us—for me. You listen when we ask it of you, and fight for us when circumstances demand it. I know that your life before we met was… _difficult_ , but without you, my life now would have been much worse.”

“I doubt that,” she counters, remembering Beraht throwing her facedown on the table, his blade tracing cuts in her flesh. _Don’t forget it, Brosca. I own you_.

Alistair waves his hands frantically. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, I’d be worse off without you, and I just wanted…to show you how important you are.”

She’s silent again, staring at the worn petals in the moonlight.

“You did say—you said it would be alright—that is, you told me you’d wanted to be courted if…”

His voice fades into the night, and Maddy for the first time looks up at him, the rose hanging at her side.  Her stomach twists in knots, and her heart thumps in her chest.  _Me? And you?_

“It was a silly impulse,” he murmurs.  “I guess it was the wrong one.” He turns.

“No!” she exclaims, her empty hand clutching his pinky and ring-finger before he can leave. “No one’s given me a gift before. I-I-I don’t know what to say. What am I supposed to do?”

Alistair looks at their linked hands, her small fingers wrapped around half his hand, and Maddy realizes this is the first time they’ve touched and not been clad in armor or dressing a wound. The air shifts around them, and Maddy wants to pause the world for half a minute more, so that she doesn’t miss a thing.

“Do you like it?” he says, turning and closing the gap between them.

She nods.

“And you accept it?”

 _Yes_.

He watches her intently, the corners of his lips turning upwards, though he tries to hide it.  “I’m glad.” He pulls his fingers from her loose grasp only to take her hand fully into his. The next moment scares her as much as the rose, as he bends down and touches his lips to the back of her hand.

“We should get back,” he says, releasing her hand, and Maddy feels the loss like she would feel the loss of her cloak: colder, exposed.  But she nods and follows him back to camp.

 


End file.
